Ratko Mladi\u0107, the former Bosnian Serb military leader convicted of genocide and war crimes, was laid to rest in Belgrade on Monday in a ceremony stripped of official state honors. The burial took place amid intensifying diplomatic pressure from the European Union, which has condemned the public commemoration of the convicted criminal.<\/p>\n
Mladi\u0107 died last Thursday in a Dutch prison facility where he was serving a life sentence for his role in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. His remains were transported to Serbia on a government aircraft on Thursday, accompanied by Justice Minister Nenad Vuji\u0107, Mladi\u0107\u2019s son Darko, and former army aides. Following a mandatory autopsy at a Belgrade military hospital, his coffin was draped in the Serbian flag and moved to a church adjacent to the Ko\u0161utnjak cemetery.<\/p>\n
Despite initial statements from Vuji\u0107 suggesting full military and state recognition, authorities clarified that the funeral would be a private affair. No senior officials, including President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107, the prime minister, or the parliamentary speaker, attended the service. There were no artillery salutes, and Mladi\u0107 was interred in a family plot next to his daughter rather than in the Alley of the Greats, as previously requested.<\/p>\n
The commemoration held at the House of the Serbian Army on Saturday was organized by an association of retired generals rather than the state. Thousands of supporters are expected to gather for the burial, prompting security concerns. President Vu\u010di\u0107 acknowledged the difficulty of managing large crowds but stated he could not attend due to a pre-scheduled visit from Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.<\/p>\n
The European response has been swift and severe. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos canceled her upcoming visit to Serbia, stating that the glorification of Mladi\u0107 is incompatible with EU values. She emphasized that Mladi\u0107 was convicted of genocide for orchestrating the deaths of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, as well as for war crimes committed during the four-year siege of Sarajevo.<\/p>\n
Michael O\u2019Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Serbian and Bosnian Serb authorities to combat the glorification of war criminals, noting that such acts are illegal in Bosnia and not protected under the European Convention on Human Rights. Meanwhile, calls have grown within the European People\u2019s Party for a rupture with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.<\/p>\n
The fallout extended to sports as well. UEFA fined Serbian club Red Star Belgrade \u20ac90,000 for fan chants honoring Mladi\u0107 during their Europa League match against Viktoria Plze\u0148. Bosnia\u2019s FK Borac Banjaluka was also penalized \u20ac39,500 for similar infractions. The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals expressed solidarity with the victims and survivors, condemning any actions that glorify those found guilty of genocide and war crimes by international courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ratko Mladi\u0107 is buried privately in Belgrade without state honors as the EU suspends visits and fines clubs over glorification of the convicted war criminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1103,133,62,1101,1100,1994],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-balkans","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-ratko-mladic","tag-serbia","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}